A database is useful only if a desired item can be efficiently found and retrieved therefrom. To locate and retrieve a desired information item in an information database, a search of the database, e.g., based on a keyword or a text string, may be required. The search typically involves finding entries matching a keyword (or string) in an index. The index is created by parsing information items into searchable words and identifying the location in which the word appears in the database. For example, the Internet, or the world wide web (WWW), may be considered as a very large database of information items, in the form of web pages, distributed over a very wide network. Currently available search engines, e.g., the YAHOO™, EXCITE®, and the like, maintain an index of a large fraction of the content of the WWW parsed into searchable words and corresponding locations, e.g., the Uniform Resource Locators (URL).
However, as the size of a database becomes very large, e.g., the number of web pages in the WWW is currently in the hundreds of millions and growing fast, a user may have to navigate through, select and review a significant number of informational items before arriving at the one desired informational item. The navigation through the ever-increasing number of informational items often proves difficult and requires a considerable investment of time, effort and sometimes even good fortune, on the part of the user.
Unfortunately, in a conventional information retrieval system, even after finding the sought after information once, it is difficult or cumbersome at best to find the same information again. Unless a user remembers the location of the once located information, the user may have to follow the same navigational trail again. Thus expending yet another considerable investment of time and effort. Moreover, a subsequent user looking for the same information would have to duplicate the time and effort, i.e., must re-invent the wheel in order to find the information. The subsequent user often ends an information retrieval session in frustration without finding the desired information. This duplicated effort is wasteful and inconvenient, and thus diminishes the usefulness of the database.
Moreover, in a conventional help information retrieval system, the help information items are fixedly mapped, requiring a user to always follow the same help menu path to arrive at a particular help item of interest. Even if the path is ultimately proven to be inefficient, the inefficient path, nevertheless, must always be followed in order to retrieve that particular item. The efficiency of a particular path that is taken may depend on the context in which the help item is sought. Because the fixed mapping cannot account for the various contexts, it is inefficient, and thus diminishes the usefulness of the help information retrieval system.
Thus, what is needed is an efficient system and method for the convenient and economical retrieval of a desired informational item in an informational retrieval system such as an improved web search engine and improved method of presenting searched information.
What is also needed is an automated system that extracts features, clusters, classifies and categorizes information to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of the information retrieval system.